Small Snail in the Big Cities

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Announcer: This is a Getty podcast.

[Theme music begins]

Host: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. But what if you still don’t succeed? How long should you keep trying?

Welcome to If Objects Could Talk, the podcast where art and artifacts come alive to share their side of the story. Today, we’re talking about a monumental bronze vase covered in intricate designs and even some creepy crawly critters. [bugs buzz] It was made in the late 1800s. The artist, Jean-Désiré Ringel d’Illzach, hoped his work would bring him fame and fortune. But sometimes things don’t happen as fast as we might want them to.

Here to fill us in on the details of this story is a tiny critter that’s been sitting at the bottom of the vase for over 100 years, and who knows a thing or two about going slow. It’s a snail.

Snail: [high, squeaky voice yells] Hello? Hello! Down here. Well, could you, uh, bring the mic a little closer? More. All the way to the base of the vase. Oh wow. My own podcast. [gasps] Gee, where to begin?

Well, I’m a snail and I live at the bottom of the coolest vase ever. My vase has a wide rounded body, narrow neck, and large opening at the top called a mouth. There are a pair of handles on each side stretching up over the mouth in bronze curlicues. A lot of people focus on the size of the vase. It’s big. Well, bigger than big, actually. No, like 10 feet tall big. [voice amplifies] That’s as tall as a basketball hoop is from the ground. [ball bounces] It weighs a ton, too. Oh, well, um, half a ton at just over 1,000 pounds. Imagine lifting that weight. [groan and cheers] I mean, snails are pretty strong for our size, but I think it would take, like, um, um, 7,250 snails just to lift it. [crowd says “wow!”]

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Once you get used to the size of the vase, you should check out all the small details covering it, like me! I’m one of eight snails at the base of the vase. The body is divided up into 12 long horizontal sections, and each section has unique decorations. One has a pattern of dots, another of stripes, and still others have imprints of juniper branches or lace or peacock feathers. Oh, there’s even a sneaky spider crawling up one crevice. [crowd gasps] No, no, no. It’s cool. She’s an old friend. [voice says “hello.”]

My vase was made in 1889 by a Frenchman, Jean-Désiré Ringel d’Illzach. But we look like an artifact that is a lot older than that. Well, you see, when he was younger, d’Illzach visited an archeological museum in Naples, Italy, and he got to see all this amazing old stuff from Pompeii.

[Percussion music plays]

He was inspired by an ancient Roman volute krater. [voice says “huh?”] Or, hmm, mixing vessel, and based the shape of my vase on an ancient Roman one. Kinda wild that we ended up in a museum over 100 years after our maker was inspired by what he saw in a different museum. How has seeing art inspired your masterpieces? Oh, maybe you’ve used an old painting as the basis for a new drawing [pencil scratches], or written fan fiction. [sword fighting] Or tried to make clothes you’ve seen in a museum. [film reel starts] But that’s the cool thing about creativity! You never know where inspiration will come from. [voice says “aha!”] Or take you. [plane takes off]

At the museum in Italy, inspiration took hold of d’Illzach, but he couldn’t make his vase all on his own. So he teamed up with a bronze factory in Belgium and struck a deal. [man laughs] The factory let d’Illzach have the supplies he needed to make his vase. [steel hammering] In exchange, they would get half the money when the vase sold. [cash register chimes] Wait, slow down. If the vase sold. [voice says “uh-oh.”] To make the vase, d’Illzach used a variation of lost-wax casting, but he created his very own process that let him preserve the imprint of any material he applied to the model. [squishing sound] Looking at my vase, you can see so many objects pressed into the surface, like, um, twigs, leaves, or fabric. Then, in another unusual move, d’Illzach decided to make the body of this monumental vase with one monumental pour of bronze. [hot bubbling] It was a risk, though. If he did any step incorrectly, oh, he would wreck the material he used and have to start all over! [musical sting] Oh, luckily he pulled it off, and then it was time to pivot from art making to art selling. [change jingles]

To find a buyer, we went on display in the Exposition Universelle, or World’s Fair, in Paris in 1889. World’s Fairs are huge international exhibitions where countries show off their scientific, artistic, and cultural achievements. The fairs started in the mid-1800s, and they still continue today. [busy crowd chatter] At the 1889 exposition in Paris, we were placed in the middle of a section entirely devoted to awesome bronze artworks, and this vase was a huge hit. Or wait, maybe it was just huge. So huge that I distinctly remember one family even used us as a landmark. [children screaming] The family was huge, too. There were lots of kids. They decided to make our vase a meeting point so that they could split up and find each other later in the day. One kid came back a bit early and spent his time examining the vase. [child says “hmm.”] He walked slowly around us multiple times, letting his eyes travel over the artwork at a snail’s pace so he could notice the details. Take it from a bug: going slow and noticing the details makes the world a lot more interesting. Unfortunately, that kid wasn’t just our biggest fan, he was one of our only fans.

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D’Illzach was hoping that a big buyer would see the big vase and pull out the big bucks, but it was not meant to be. He blamed critics in the press. One even said our vase was, “Without any claim to artistic virtue.” Ouch! I guess you have to have a pretty tough shell to be a professional artist. To be fair, [laughs] we faced some really big competition. The most famous artwork at the 1889 World’s Fair was the Eiffel Tower, a ginormous thousand-foot high steel structure. It was just supposed to be up for the world’s fair, but it was so popular that it is still a famous landmark in the middle of Paris. So maybe we just weren’t big enough?

D’Illzach and the bronze factory were mega bummed that the vase hadn’t sold. Ugh. But there was still a silver lining, at least for me. We got to go see another world’s fair, this time in Chicago in 1893.

[Carnival music]]

At Chicago’s fair, we were in a section of art from Belgium, so we could represent the Belgian bronze foundry. There were other cool statues and a table of fancy plates, and so many people. Oh, I think we snails had as much fun people-watching as the people had looking at the art. You’ll never believe who I saw, though. That kid! He was a little older, a teenager now, but he stopped to say hello to us all, even the spider. [voice says “hello.”] He had a little sketchbook with him. It looked like he had made drawings of many of the objects at the fair. Oh, they were really good, too. [voice says “Thanks!”] Anyway, around this time, there was a buyer who was kind of interested in bringing us home, but things fell apart when they were negotiating the price. [grumbling voice says “No.”] And after the fair, we returned to the bronze factory again.

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Who knew artists had to be good at selling things, too? That’s one of the toughest parts of making art your livelihood. It takes time and money to make art, especially big sculptures. So if your art doesn’t sell, you might not have enough money to make the next piece. It’s a challenge artists have been facing for centuries. Could they get a patron, someone who supported their work? Could they find time to make art while having a steady day job? Or could they sell their work for enough of a profit to keep making art full time?

D’Illzach had carved a unique path for himself by collaborating with the bronze factory to create our enormous vase. [metal hammering] The factory helped to cover the cost, and in exchange they got to show off their exceptional talents too. [voice says “check it out.”] Great bronze artists need an equally great bronze foundry after all. But while they were getting some good publicity at the world’s fairs, the foundry really wanted to earn back their investment on this giant vase. So we went back on display, and D’Illzach kept reaching out to people to see if they were in need of a 10-foot, half-ton, Roman-inspired vase. [crowd chatter] Who doesn’t need a 10-foot, half-ton, Roman-inspired, bronze vase is my question? [percussive sting]

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To make a long story short, we ended up in a third world’s fair, this time in Brussels in 1910. And we were placed on a pedestal in our very own section, where our vase towered over all the people that walked by. Personally, I thought it was kind of fun to be up so high. Since us snails are at the bottom of the vase, usually all we can see are people’s shoes. Now we got a good look at their shirts, too. And you’ll never believe whose shirt I saw 11 years after our first world’s fair. That’s right, the kid, only he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a young man. He stopped by before the exposition even opened [mature voice says “hello.”] because he had his own work to display. I didn’t see what was in his box, but he stopped to look at us all over again when he walked in, circled the whole vase, and called us old friends. Guess you never know what’ll inspire you or who you’ll inspire. You just make the best art you can and hope it’ll find its audience.

[Piano music]

Our vase wasn’t sold in D’Illzach’s lifetime. He continued to make other artworks that did sell, though, which meant he was able to continue creating. Today, he is remembered as a great artist. Eventually, we went back to the bronze factory where we were made, then to a private collector, and in 2009, we crossed the ocean again to get to the Getty Museum, where we’re surrounded by art and visitors from around the world once more. I just wish I could have told that kid the path to success can be long and winding, so you gotta slow down and enjoy the view.

[Theme music begins]

Host: I hope you enjoyed learning about world’s fairs and this enormous vase. Join us next time when a cabinet reveals its secrets. [creaking noise] To see photographs of the vase, visit our website at getty dot edu slash IOCT. We’ve also got a listening guide with discussion questions and related activities there.

This episode was written by Claire Hupy and produced by Zoe Goldman. Tricia Brioux voiced the snail. Theme music, mixing, and sound design by Alexandra Kalinowski. Christopher Sprinkle is executive producer. Special thanks to curators Anne-Lise Desmas and Miriam Schefzyk, as well as Rebekkah Hart.

These stories are historical fiction. They’re based on historical facts and deep research, but we’ve filled in some gaps to make a good story. If you have questions about what you’ve heard, write to us at podteam at Getty dot edu. Catch you next time.